On 12/23/2014 09:09 PM, Bill Wichser wrote:
On Tue, Dec 23, 2014 at 12:12 PM, Prentice Bisbal
<[email protected]> wrote:
I was discussing putting /home and /usr/local for my cluster on a
GPFS or
Lustre filesystem, in addition to using it just for /scratch.
We too have debated this. Seems a waste to add some 8 or 20 T to a
local cluster when we have this nice, central filesystem available.
And it's not like the users aren't already using it for everything now
anyway. Yet we always come back to locality of data. Or at least
locality of the login directory. The three filesystems versus one
filesystem, well, it seems attractive. Not only to admins but to
users as well.
In the end, while we'd like to consolidate everything in one place,
there are reasons not to do so. I suppose the strongest is that
clusters are dynamic whereas that central storage, not so much. There
were Sandybridge executables, then Westmere, then Ivy. Haswell is just
beginning. So a new cluster with a local home is a great place for
these execs, keeping architecture codes distinct. If for no other
reason this has perpetuated the current method of keeping these local
/home directories.
I have other reasons as well. But that is perhaps my strongest this
month.
In that case, I can't wait until January! Only 8 more days!
I see the logic in having separate /usr/local for every cluster so you
can install optimized binaries for each processor, but do you find your
users take the time to recompile their own codes for each processor
type, or did you come up with this arrangement to force them to do so?
Prentice
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